The union minister Rajnath Singh’s ‘Operation Smile’ has recently rescued over 19000 boys and girls, who were potentially be pushed into prostitutions and bonded labor. The drive working in number of states across the country collaborating with local police department and Women & Child department saved these missing kids. The states like Maharashtra and Haryana took leadership during the drive.
A nine year old Diwakar resident of Ramgarh district in Jharkhand, left his parental house in May this year, after was beaten up by his parents. He boarded train to Howrah with his friend, was recently saved by Jharkhand police and re-united with his family.
The drive pioneered by Union Minister Rajnath Singh has hundreds of similar story behind the missing boys and girls.
The announcement of ‘Operation Smile’ was made in an One –day seminar on human trafficking held on 7th October this year. During the seminar a special session was held on child trafficking. In addition to this investigation of missing child cases were also considered. The seminar was planned by Ministry of Home Affairs.
The government official in his conversation with ET said “in many cases, the missing children were traced to shelter homes and their interview revealed that the shelter homes do not make an effort to reunite children with parents to lure of grants given by the government.”
A case in point is of 11-year-old Arjun Kumar, a native of Manesar in Haryana who was traced to a shelter home in Delhi where he was staying for 6 months. “Despite giving details of his whereabouts, the authorities never made an effort to inform his parents,” said an official to ET.
The Police department involved in the ‘Operation Smile’ also reported that, among the rescued children percentage of boys is higher than that of girls, who are generally forced into prostitution. Besides this, Maharashtra’s CID has already saved a girl, who was trafficked for prostitution.
Home Ministry has suggested state governments to sensitize and train police officers at various ranks about issued related to missing children, POSCO Act, Juvenile Justice Act and Protection of Child Rights Acts and then sent to various parts of the country including Delhi, Jaipur, Haridwar, Gurgaon, Mumbai and Kolkata to recover missing children.
The Centre government is also planning to reward officers on basis of their individual efforts and performances, but it is also required that details of identified children are being shared with print and electronic media, so that the parents and relatives can get their loved ones in a short while.
